Animal Crossing: New Horizons‘ second summer update has arrived, and it adds a handful of new features to the game, including a weekly summer fireworks festival, the ability to fall on your face, and save backups. You’ll need to have a paid Nintendo Switch Online subscription to take advantage of the latter, and it works a little bit differently than the typical cloud saves offered through the service. If you’re unsure how the process works, here’s how to back up your Animal Crossing save data.
How To Back Up Your Save Data
After installing New Horizons’ 1.4.0 update, you’ll see Backups – Not Set beneath the Settings option in the lower lefthand corner of the title screen. Press the Minus button to access the Settings menu, then select Island Backup from the list of options that Tom Nook presents you to begin the backup process.
Once Island Backup has been selected, Nook will emphasize that this backup function is only intended to be used if your Nintendo Switch is lost or has been damaged. He’ll then present you with options to Enable island backup or Listen to explanation. Select the former to enable save backups; select the latter to learn more about the process and its requirements.
Island Backup Requirements
In order to use the Island Backup function, you’ll first need to have a paid Nintendo Switch Online membership. Individual subscriptions for the service run for $4 USD for one month, $8 USD for three months, and $20 USD for one year. Nintendo also offers an annual Family Plan that costs $35 USD and covers up to eight Nintendo Accounts, even across multiple systems.
On top of that, you will naturally need to have a physical or digital copy of Animal Crossing: New Horizons, along with save data for the game. You’ll also need to be connected to the internet for your data to be backed up.
How Is Save Data Backed Up?
After you enable the Island Backup function, your save data will automatically be uploaded periodically, so you won’t need to do anything else. Backups will occur when you’re not playing the game, even if your system is in sleep mode (so long as you’re connected to the internet).
You can see when your data was last backed up on the title screen. The time and date of the latest backup will be displayed in the lower left corner of the screen, beneath the Settings option.
How To Restore Save Data
As Nintendo has been insistent in emphasizing, you can only restore your New Horizons save data if your Switch is lost or has been damaged, so you’ll need to have a repaired or replacement system (along with a copy of New Horizons) before you can recover your save. The user who first enabled island backups will need to be the one to restore the save data.
How To Transfer Save Data To Another Switch
At present, New Horizons does not allow you to transfer your save data from one Switch to another. However, Nintendo has previously confirmed that it is working on a function that will allow you to transfer your New Horizons save to a different console. That does not yet have a release date, but it is slated to arrive in a future update.
Obsidian Entertainment’s new title, Grounded, will seem a lot like other survival games at first blush–even though it’s Honey, I Shrunk The Kids-like setting puts it at a super-small scale compared to titles like Minecraft or The Forest. Like those games, you still need to drink water and eat food to stay alive, construct shelters to keep from getting overwhelmed by indigenous life, and craft equipment to help you keep alive and thrive in your new surroundings.
Though Grounded has a lot in common with other games in the genre, its shrunken approach to the survival genre means it has quite a few of its own quirks. From how you’ll uncover crafting recipes, to the creatures keen on eating you that live in the backyard, there are plenty of nuances to understand. Here’s a quick rundown of 10 key tips that’ll help you adjust to life in the lawn.
1. Pick Up Everything And Analyze It
One of the first things you’ll come across when you start a game of Grounded is a strange little science facility called a Field Station. This is your first inkling that there’s something bigger going on here than a weird dream. Inside every Field Station is an item called an Analyzer–something that’s extremely useful.
Like other survival games, you can pick up just about everything in Grounded, and most of those objects, like sprigs, grass planks, plant fibers, and sap, can be used to make stuff. You’ll get some crafting recipes just from picking up objects around the world, but Field Stations are essential to unlocking even more. Use the Analyzer on your materials to find out more about them and to find new crafting recipes for using them. It has limited uses and has to recharge after you’ve scanned a few items, but as you explore, you’ll find Field Stations all over the place that also have Analyzers. Make sure to mark them with Trail Markers (more on that in a minute) so they’re easy to find.
2. Pick A Good Base Spot
The story quests you’ll start with in Grounded will give you some stuff to keep you busy as you acclimate yourself to the game, but while there’s a lot to accomplish on your first day, survival is still your main concern. After a time, the sun will go down in Grounded, and that’s when life in the backyard becomes even more dangerous than it already is. You’ll want to create a base relatively early, even if it’s pretty rudimentary, so you have somewhere to sleep through the nights.
A good spot is in the early going near the Mysterious Machine, since you’ll be spending a lot of time in that area. You also can’t go wrong building near a landmark like a fallen juice box–or even inside a soda can. These locations drip juice you can drink that’ll refill both your hunger and thirst meters, provide natural cover and protection, and can make base-building easy, so take advantage of them. You’ll need an axe to cut down grass to make walls, so keep that in mind when crafting. But at the very least, build yourself a lean-to fairly early so you have a spot to sleep and respawn. You can also build lean-tos out in the world so you can change your respawn point as you explore to cut down travel time–but be sure to build them in protected areas, and not in places like spider dens where you might find yourself trapped and repeatedly killed by enemies.
3. Make Armor, Check For Perks
Before long, you’ll find yourself fighting the various bugs in Grounded, and you’ll probably find very quickly that protection is key. Combat isn’t too difficult in general, but unaided, you’ll take a lot of damage even from small enemies, and it can be tough to heal up in an emergency. Therefore, armor should be an early priority. You’ll want to build a workbench near your base relatively early so you can start constructing armor out of whatever you find. The crafting menu will show you how much defense armor will afford you, and getting something on your body early can help you survive dangerous situations while you’re learning the ropes.
Armor also carries different perks depending on what it’s made from. Some armor might give you more benefits when you eat food, while other clothes can make you run faster. Pay attention to the perks listed on your armor in the “Inspect” menu so you know how to use it most effectively. (Weapons also have perks you’ll want to pay attention to, because having the right gear can give you big advantages.)
Once you start to make your way toward the oak tree as part of the story, craft a hammer and smash up any acorns you find–their shells make for some of the toughest armor you can get early on, before scrapping with any of the bigger enemies around the backyard.
4. Avoid Spiders
Most of the bugs you find in the first few hours of Grounded will leave you alone. Lawn mites are a bit aggressive, but they’re tiny and easily dispatched, and bugs like ants and ladybugs will regard you curiously but go about their business, so long as you don’t attack them. But some bugs, like beetles, are aggressive on sight–and some, like spiders, are deadly predators.
You’ll find spiders before long as you approach the oak tree, and they can be seriously frightening, as well as extremely deadly. Armor will help you survive any run-ins, but until you get better weapons than the spear you can craft at the start of Grounded, you should keep your distance. You can tell when a spider spots you because it’ll stop and put its legs up; if its eyes go red, it’s after you. The good news is that you can sprint away from pretty much any combat encounter to escape, so spiders are easily fled. You can also usually spot and avoid them at a distance by watching for blades of grass shaking as if something big is pushing through them–something big is pushing through them, so go the other way.
5. Watch For Dew Drops
Grounded is first and foremost a survival game, which means you need to keep yourself fed and hydrated in order to stay alive for any length of time. Food is pretty easy to come by, as the game’s tutorial will tell you–there are lots of mushrooms growing around the backyard that you can snack on, and they’ll keep you going until you start figuring out how to craft the items you need for cooking bug meat. Water, on the other hand, isn’t as easy. You’ll find a lot of puddles in the backyard, but drinking that water isn’t the greatest idea.
Puddle water makes you a little sick in Grounded, so while your thirst meter is replenished, your health meter gets knocked down. That means you should carry spare food if you think you’re going to have to imbibe from a local gross puddle. You can get around that issue by finding clean water, generally in dew drops. These aren’t impossible to find, but they are somewhat rarer than puddles and can be tough to spot. Look for them hanging on grass blades above you–they’re easily knocked down by throwing a rock or some other object at them. Watch for and drink dew just about whenever you can for big boosts to your thirst meter, without the drawbacks. Watch your crafting menus for the ability to build objects that’ll catch water at your base so won’t have to hunt for it.
6. Block, Strafe, And Stun In Combat
You’ll be fighting a lot of insects in Grounded after a time, and sooner or later, you’re going to want to venture into the tougher bugs’ territories or into the underground tunnels that house spiders so you can get better resources. Armor will help you in these situations, but practice with the combat system can get you out of most situations regardless of what your equipment looks like.
Fighting in Grounded is about stamina management. The more times you swing a weapon or block an attack, the more your stamina depletes, so you need to be careful not to overdo it with slashing at an enemy. Meanwhile, bugs will telegraph their attacks pretty obviously before they do them, and they tend to fall into two camps: smaller, quicker jabs and slashes, and larger lunge attacks. Once an enemy makes the animation to telegraph an attack, you can often strafe to the sides, since they won’t turn once they’re committed. You can also block attacks, which is key to staying alive–blocking reduces the damage you take, and if you can manage to hit the block button the instant an attack would land, you can deflect it for almost no damage at all. Getting good at blocking enemy attacks, smart strafing, using weapon perks like Stun will help you deal with most threats pretty easily.
You should also note that if you get into trouble, you can often trick bugs into fighting one another to give you a chance to regroup, heal up, or escape a battle. Pay attention to which bugs are aggressive with each other and you can use their behaviors to your advantage.
7. Mark Key Locations
The backyard of Grounded is huge and it’s very easy to get lost in it. As you explore, you’ll discover important landmarks, like a fallen piece of wood or various tipped-over juice boxes, that can help you find your way around, but opening your map constantly puts you at a disadvantage and leaves you vulnerable to attack. Luckily, you can construct your own custom waypoints that appear on the screen while you’re wandering around to help you find things, and you should do so anytime you find something worth remembering so you can find it easily.
Waypoints are called Trail Markers in the crafting menu, and you’ll need clover leaves to build them. You should keep some on-hand at all times so that any time you happen across a Field Station, a spot with particularly useful resources, or anything else worthy of note, you can drop a flag. Pop one next to your base(s) so you can easily find them when you’re done exploring. Smart, organized use of Trail Markers makes mapping the backyard much easier, so get in the habit.
8. Climb Whatever You Can
Trail Markers are handy because it can be tough to see what’s around and where you’re going in Grounded, what with all the grass and weeds blocking your view wherever you go. Wandering around on the ground can be disorienting, but a lot of objects in the game will support your weight and allow you to get up into the air, where you can see farther, orient yourself better, and most importantly, avoid bugs.
If you can get into the air, you should. Bent grass blades, tree roots, leaves, even clovers make handy platforms. Bugs won’t chase you onto most objects, and you can even sometimes build in these elevated locations for added protection. What’s more, with enough height, you can make traveling quicker and easier, thanks to gliders. Speaking of which….
9. Grab A Dandelion Tuft For An Early Glider
You will take fall damage in Grounded, and while getting off the ground has its benefits, it can be easy to fall off stuff and get injured. A glider is a piece of gear you can make that can help with that, but rather than crafting one, you can get a glider quickly and easily by grabbing one of those white dandelion tufts that drop near the plants every so often. Snag it and add it to the “Glider” spot on your equipment list on the right side of your inventory, and you’ll be able to pull it out with the shift key anytime you’re falling.
While a glider will save you from injury, it’s even better as a means of traversal. Climb high enough and you can use the glider to travel a long distance without running on the ground and risking injury. Snag a dandelion glider early and cut down on your travel times.
10. Gather Raw Science
Once you head to the oak tree as part of the story missions in Grounded, you’ll discover a hidden lab beneath it. Inside is Burg-L, a robot who knows something about the experiment that shrunk you. In addition to. providing you with quests to keep you busy and help you explore, Burg-L will answer some questions about what’s going on and sell you new crafting recipes, but only if you gather a new resource called Raw Science.
There’s not a real explanation of what Raw Science actually is, but you’ll find it around Grounded, floating in weird places–it’s a bubble of pink goo, and you want to grab it whenever you see it. Completing quests and crafting new items will also provide you with Raw Science, so it’s good to keep messing around and trying new things. Raw Science is essentially a currency you can use with Burg.L. to buy stuff from his little shop, so you want to gather it when you can and keep an eye on your supply.
Got more essential tips for staying alive in Grounded? Drop them in the comments below.
The latest Pokemon Masters event, Summer Superstars, is underway. The mobile title’s event is live now through August 16, giving players a chance to earn items through event battles and daily log-ins.
Pokemon Masters players can earn travel tokens by beating event battles. These in turn can be used to move around an event map, which has different rewards in each map location. After completing a map you advance to a checkpoint, which gives more event story and advances you to another event map. During the event, the maps are unlimited so players can stockpile as many items as they want.
The Steven Seasonal Scout is now live! 5★ Steven (Summer 2020) & Sandslash are featured in the seasonal sync pair scout! You can get Steven (Summer 2020) & Sandslash’s sync orbs from the Summer Superstars event map!#PokemonMasterspic.twitter.com/uXrBNoWhek
Players can also earn 100 Gems each day for logging in, for up to a total of 1400 Gems. Additional travel tokens can be earned for using specific sync pairs during combat, including fan favorite Steven.
Applicable Sync Pairs
Steven (Summer 2020) and Sandslash: X1.6 tokens
Lyra (Summer 2020) and Jigglypuff: X1.6 tokens
Steven and Metagross: X1.4 tokens
Lyra and Chikorita: X1.4 tokens
Player character and Pikachu: X1.2 tokens
Player character and Torchic: X1.2 tokens
The sync pair bonuses also work with the evolved versions of the listed Pokemon.
It is important to note that you must have completed Main Story Chapter 1: The More the Merrier to participate in the event. Some of the sync pairs you will battle may have different abilities than those that are obtainable for players and at the end of the event all leftover travel tokens will be converted into coins at a rate of 10 coins per token.
Update (7/31/20) – As reported by CNBC, President Trump told reporters that he will ban TikTok from the United States as early as Saturday, August 1.
“As far as TikTok is concerned, we’re banning them from the United States,” Trump said.
This move will come through an executive order of another method, although Trump did not specify what course of action he would take.
As far as the reports stating the Microsoft is interested in purchasing TikTok from parent company ByteDance, Trump said “he didn’t support the reported spinoff deal.”
Original story follows.
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TikTok, the Chinese-owned social media video app that is under scrutiny from the Trump administration, is reportedly in talks with Microsoft and other companies to sell itself and part from its parent company ByteDance.
As reported by The New York Times, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or Cfius, has been looking into ByteDance’s 2017 purchase of Musical.ly, which would become TikTok. It has decided to “order ByteDance to divest TikTok, and the government is currently discussing the terms of its separation. White House officials have further said that “TikTok may post a national security threat because of its Chinese ownership.”
It is unclear if President Trump, who has been informed of the investigation, will focus the divestment order on TikTok’s American operations or if it would include its more global business as well.
Another option Trump could exercise would be using “the vast powers of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to bar certain foreign apps from American app stores.” Furthermore, the Trump Administration is also considering if it should add ByteDance to the “entity list,” which would bar it from purchasing American products and services without a special license.
TikTok has explores other options to avoid a sell, including having a non-Chinese investor, like Sequoia Capital, SoftBank, and General Atlantic, purchase a majority stake from ByteDance.
ByteDance’s current valuation is around “$100 billion,” according to research firm PitchBook, so any deal would indeed be a big one.
TikTok’s issues have been going on for months at this point, as lawmakers and the Trump administration have “questioned whether the app is susceptible to influence from the Chinese government, including potential requests to censor material shared on the platform or to share American user data with Chinese officials.”
“It is well established at this point that apps that have granular access to user data and location and other sensitive personal data are very much on the radar of Cfius and can cause significant national security concerns,” said John P. Kabaelo, a lawyer who represents companies in Cfius reviews.
TikTok is currently used by more than 800 million people worldwide, and TikTok’s Chinese offices have “swollen to thousands of employees.” TikTok also has offices in New York and Los Angeles.
TikTok has tried to fight these accusations and change its course, and has taken such action as hiring a top Disney executive, Kevin Mayer, to be its chief executive and pledging to publicly reveal the “algorithm that powers its app.”
Editor’s note: This review evaluates Grounded based on its early access state. We plan on reviewing Grounded again once it gets a full release.
Think about your favourite survival games. Think back to how they launched. Think of their initial public showing. If your favourites are like mine, you’ll notice a trend: None of them were very good when they first launched to the general public.
Subnautica had me on the edge of my seat at launch, but it ran terribly. Four years later and its 1.0 build was one of my favourite games in a year that included God of War and Red Dead Redemption 2. The Forest, similarly, launched a mere shadow of the terrifying adventure it would eventually become. No Man’s Sky was near-universally criticised at launch, but it eventually reached its potential and went beyond. Grounded, from Obsidian Entertainment, is currently in the early part of the aforementioned Early Access phase, and is lacking in many respects. But, like the games mentioned above, it has what feels like the potential to grow into something much, much greater.
A co-op survival game like many others, Grounded puts you in the shoes of one of four tween explorers and challenges you to live. Instead of sending you to a stranded island or an ocean-covered planet, Grounded plonks you in a suburban backyard. The twist? You’re one two-thousandth your regular size. You get to live out a situation that is pulled straight out of things like Honey I Shrunk The Kids, The Magic School Bus, or Anatomy Park, and if you have any affinity for those things, getting to take part in the situation is very cool.
You awaken with no memory of how you landed in this situation, and your goals are twofold: work out how to return to your normal size (maybe even a little bigger, for basketball reasons) and, more pressingly, to survive. Neither objective is all that simple.
In its current state you can actually wrap up the story content of Grounded in under 30 minutes. Once you know what you’re doing and where to go, there’s little stopping you from completing the steps necessary to “‘finish” the game. From there, you’re able to complete rudimentary quests, and you can continue to explore and build within the backyard world, but you won’t be achieving any story goals.
Of course, the story is far from finished in its current form. You aren’t “big” again after you finish what’s available; the rest of it simply hasn’t been implemented yet. That’s not surprising–other story-focussed survival games like Subnautica and The Forest were the same when they launched. After a short period, then, you’re left with really just one goal: survival.
Survival games are about priority management. The good ones are a series of checklists, vital tasks for you to tick off each in-game day in order to eagerly start the list anew tomorrow. But the thrill of playing an outstanding survival game comes from the way that priority management leads to unexpected storylines.
Grounded starts out deceptively easy–you need food and water or you will perish. Day one involves working out what is edible and what isn’t. You can eat mushrooms and you can reliably find water dew dangling from blades of grass. Unfortunately, because you’re the size of a Lego figure’s hand, you discover that mites will try to eat you.
Suddenly, your priorities change. Now you need food, water, and something to defend yourself. Grounded features a great system in the form of SCA.B OS, which helpfully details crafting recipes. Unluckily, while hunting for the Pebblet, Sprigs, and Plant Fibres you need to make a spear, you might get stuck in a spider web. And again, your priorities change. Grounded has those compelling survival game hooks.
While progression is superficially tied to the “scanning” mechanism, wherein you feed objects into a computer to learn new recipes, the real growth comes from your own internalisation. The better you understand the world, the better you’re able to manage your wants and needs. And that knowledge leads to the ability to alter your management strategies. Even in its larval form, Grounded provides you with an array of methods for negating the pressures of survival. You can build canteens to carry water and tanks to store it. You can cook food, build walls, and craft armour, weapons, and more.
And knowing these things allows you to adjust your task list further to enhance efficiency. Even when you’re a miniature Bear Grylls, the second-to-second narrative is continuously changing because there’s always something you can’t account for just around the corner (thankfully, the game features a mode to cater to arachnophobes). While the map layout is fixed in each run, much of the resource and enemy placement is not. So even when you know exactly what you’re doing, there’s an air of inevitability in the knowledge that things are always just moments away from going terribly wrong.
At one point in a successful run, two giant Wolf Spiders–nasty jumping beasts about the size of a Range Rover compared to the player character–decided to leave their homes and destroy my group’s base. We’d done nothing to provoke the attack, and being unable to defeat two Wolf Spiders at once, we were forced to simply sit and watch as our base was demolished. Or so we thought. We were saved from certain death when two lady beetles showed up and started attacking the spiders.
What makes survival games special is that nobody else will have that exact same story. And Grounded nails that emergent element in a way that’s natural and consequential. It’s the same feeling you get when mutants raid your base in The Forest, or when Leviathans attack your Cyclops in Subnautica. These are common occurrences, but the circumstances surrounding them make them endearingly personal.
What brings Grounded back to earth is the sheer lack of depth in its priorities. The survival loop in the game as it is right now is simply too short, too easy to manage and get a complete hold of. And apart from doing quests for BURG-L–the helpful grilling robot who marks the end of the game’s current story content–there’s little reason to extend your reach beyond their grasp.
In fact, in its current form, building giant bases in anything but Creative mode is a Sisyphean effort. While the dual Wolf Spider attack story is my own, it’s not exactly a rare occurrence and many players in the community have spoken about the overly hostile wildlife and its base-wrecking desires. The tapes you find–yes, audiotapes are a primary narrative device–hint at the wildlife suddenly becoming unusually hostile, so we might eventually find out why the insects are so aggro. Until that can be dealt with, though, you’re generally better off building your base into a permanent structure, like a soda can–and even then, you’re only keeping out the biggest of baddies.
And while Grounded definitely has plans to expand–there is “under construction” tape in some areas of the map–the world feels, overall, a little small in early access. Puns aside, the map doesn’t feel like it has square footage to feel vast. You move around it quickly, you jump high and suffer little fall damage, and you can even get a dandelion to allow you to glide. The game has a cartoon adventure vibe, so the arcade-style movement makes sense, but the extra speed effectively shrinks the map once you come to understand it fully.
Strangely, there’s no radial compass in the game, which initially makes finding your way around difficult. It’s easy to get turned around in the grass stalk forests of some litterbug’s backyard because it can be tricky to spot any landmarks. And until you get your bearings (and add some trail markers) the only thing that really slows you down as you bunny-hop across the map is the need to tap M to work out where you’re going.
Grounded has the foundation needed to turn into a great survival game, but it has a long way to go yet. The titular term comes from aviation–when a pilot finds themselves, for whatever reason, unable to fly, they are Grounded. It’s a pretty apt name for the current state of Obsidian’s foray into the co-op survival genre. But like a balsa wood airplane, Grounded sits at the outstretched tension point of a strong rubber band. It is pure, unadulterated potential energy, and all we can do is sit back and wait to see if that rubber band snaps or if the game achieves take off. I think it’s gonna fly.
Star Renegades‘ calling card is its reactive turn-based combat, which encourages the strategic use of well-timed interrupts and counters to paralyze your opponents’ defenses and overwhelm them with powerful combo attacks. It’s a battle system that I love but don’t often see in many games–there’s a more approachable version in Child of Light and a tactical variation in Othercide, but that’s all that I’ve experienced so far.
Star Renegades’ spin on the formula adds an interesting relationship-focused twist, both in terms of the friendships and connections between the characters in your party, as well as your squads’ relationship to enemies they’ve fought before. Your squad can grow stronger through their deepening connection to each other, and just as easily, your squad’s actions will have an impact on the makeup of the opposing army you face.
In Star Renegades, you oversee the members of an elite squad that’s a part of a rebellion against a technologically advanced alien army that’s controlled by an AI only referred to as Mother. You can only commit to a certain number of actions before your squad has to rest for the day, and while camping out for the night, each character can do something for themselves or someone else–choosing to do the latter will deepen the relationship between the two characters. Squadmates can become close acquaintances before becoming friends and then eventually something more.
“It depends on the hero pairing, but many of our relationships can proceed well past the platonic level and into the physical,” Star Renegades lead game designer Peter McLaren told me. “And, it being the future, polyamory has no stigma whatsoever. If the player can swing it with the resources they have, there are no limits to the number of partners a hero can take on. After all, they might all die in the next fight, right?”
McLaren’s comment refers to the roguelike influences on Star Renegades. There’s no permadeath in regards to individual characters during a playthrough (McLaren said the team “found that it didn’t bring a ton to the gameplay loop”), but you do have a timetable for objectives you need to hit. Your band of heroes is led by J5T-1N, a robot that carries knowledge from an alternate reality that has already lost to the alien invasion. So you know about certain world-ending events before they happen. Fail to stop them in time and J5T-1N will travel to the next reality where you can once again tackle the invasion. Each reality isn’t an exact match, though, and this translates into procedurally generated levels. So even if previous realities provide you a rough idea of what to expect, you’ll still have to be prepared for small changes.
This means it’s in your best interest to spend your time wisely, whether that’s moving towards stopping each world-ending threat, picking your battles, or pairing up compatible squadmates. And yes, there’s more to a deepening relationship than some cute banter between two friends with benefits–characters who are close to one another will develop special partner-based attacks and lead to you further expanding your squad.
“I don’t think I’m spoiling anything, but many of our heroes are only unlockable by the relationship pairing between two other heroes,” McLaren said. “The, uh, ‘science’ behind it is complicated, but let’s just say that their bodies unite to, uh, produce another hero in another quantum reality. It’s pretty gross, if you think about it.”
And there are the relationships you forge with enemies to consider, too. Star Renegades includes a Nemesis-like system where the make-up of the enemy hierarchy will change over time depending on which leaders are killed (and possibly resurrected by Mother), which ones defeat your current squad and are thus promoted, and which flee from a fight and are demoted for their cowardice. And when you run into an enemy you’ve met before, they’ll remember how the last confrontation went down and react accordingly.
“[Your] adversaries will often, if the combat isn’t going their way, attempt to weasel their way out via emergency teleportation extraction, which acts as a bit of a black mark against them in the eyes of [Mother],” McLaren said. “This act of cowardice won’t aid them in their ultimate quest to get promoted up to their max possible rank, so they’ll seek restitution. The next time you run into them, they’ll remember their ignominious retreat the last time they encountered you. This will lead the adversary to aggressively attempt to redress that embarrassment, including being much less willing to retreat a second time.”
He continued: “Similarly, enemies chosen for resurrection by Mother will also be more aggressive in attempting to kill you–they’ll remember being ignominiously snuffed out by you in their previous life, naturally. Additionally, enemies that have succeeded in killing you get promoted, giving them new powers, behaviors, and lackeys, which collectively influence their decision-making.”
This ultimately all results in a turn-based RPG where you’re encouraged to not only consider which classes will pair up nicely when going into battle, but also think about which heroes can forge strong partnerships and how enemies pose different threats based on your history. It seems like a fun system to play around with and I’m intrigued to see how long-term relationships, developed over the course of hours, might impact my team composition and combat strategies. Star Renegades is set to release for PC on September 8, with console ports for Xbox One, PS4, and Switch scheduled for later this year.
If you are working at home, or just gaming at home, a spacious, comfortable setup is absolutely essential. Right now you can save some serious cash at Newegg when you pick up the OFM Essentials gaming chair and the Vitesse 55″ gaming desk, and you can get free shipping.
The desk comes with a $10 promotional gift card and a large (waterproof) mouse pad, so you’ll be able to hit the ground running with your new setup.
Brian Barnett writes wiki guides, deals posts, features, and much more for IGN. You can get your fix of Brian’s antics on Twitter and Instagram (@Ribnax).
